


Entitled to Eclipse

by ooinugirloo



Series: Nations, Like Stars [1]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Gen, Kid Fic, Tarsus IV, allusions to child abuse/neglect, brief descriptions of genocide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-01
Updated: 2013-08-01
Packaged: 2017-12-22 02:06:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/907605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ooinugirloo/pseuds/ooinugirloo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your father is a legend, your mother a ghost. You are both of them, and neither. You are an impossibility, but undeniably real. You are James Tiberius Kirk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Entitled to Eclipse

You haven’t even been born yet, and your parents are saying goodbye.

This is your first lesson in impermanence, though you won’t know it until later. You are born to fire and blood, a spark in the void. The first sounds that reach your ears are sobs; the first things you feel are your mother’s tears. Your tiny hands reach upwards, searching for anything real, anything warm. All they find is empty space.

___

You’re ten, and your mom is gone.

She’s been gone for years, though, really. Ever since you can remember she’s never looked you in the eye, avoided looking at you at all if she could. You learn not to touch, not to speak when she’s in the room. You learn to make yourself small and quiet, so that she doesn’t get that look on her face. She looks at you on your birthday one year, because you beg her, and her entire face crumples, eyes going blank and distant. You decide that it’s not worth it, making her look like that. She may not be able to look at you, but she loves you—she says so. Even though she leaves, she always comes back. She pats Sam on the head as she heads off for the stars and says “Look after your brother”. You try to imagine what that hand must feel like.

You’re ten, and Sam’s leaving.

Sam’s 14 and angry, Mom’s gone, and no one else cares enough to stop him. You try: but you’re small and weak and can’t hold him down, your big, strong older brother. You try: asking him to wait, just wait until Mom gets back, it’ll be better, you’ll see! You try: crying and clutching onto his sleeves until you just can’t hold on anymore, can’t breathe. But Sam hates Frank for trying to be Dad, hates Mom for loving the stars and the memory of her husband more than her children, hates you a little bit for driving her away. Sam says he’s suffocating. He says “You’ll be fine, Jimmy, you’re the good kid.” You cry until you pass out, sitting where he finally managed to pry your futilely grasping fingers from his shirt, pushing you away. Being good hadn’t made Mom happy, or Sam stay with him. Being good wasn’t worth anything at all.

You’re ten, and you’ve never been more alone.

Frank blames you for Sam running off, says it’s your fault for not stopping him. Frank says he’ll be damned if you get away with anything else under his watch. You have to clean your room, and scrub the kitchen, and mow the lawn, and wash the car. Frank takes the money your mom sends and drinks until he falls down, when you’re lucky. You do what Frank tells you in a sort of numb haze for a few weeks, preoccupied with school and homework and your constant litany of chores. Then school ends and you have nothing to do except what Frank tells you, and the thousand things you need to do even though he doesn’t tell you. You have to buy groceries and toilet paper. You have to go feed the horses and the pigs. You have to do all of the things Sam used to do, and every day you get a little angrier. In the middle of July, you stand in the oppressive heat of the garage, unspooling the hose for your weekly task of washing the Corvette. Frank is standing behind you, telling himself what a good person he is to take in a widow’s two brats—even if one of them up and ran away. Telling himself how at least he gets the dead man’s car out of the deal, that’s an antique, you know. Worth a lot of money. He shuffles off, still muttering, and your whole body flushes with heat. You are suddenly moving, blind and deaf with rage, throwing down the hose and sliding into the leather seat. Your trembling hands grip the wheel, legs just long enough to hit the pedals. You turn the key and feel the car rumble to life around you, growling as if a personification of your anger. You gun it, tires squealing as you shoot out of the garage, down the driveway, out into the road, and past everything you know. You know that there’s a police officer next to you, but you don’t care. You don’t care that you’re driving towards a chasm. You’ve already tipped over the edge of the chasm in your own mind, you want to see if it feels the same in reality. Nearing the edge, you feel like a shooting star, flaming and blazing. It’s only the thought of Frank sneering at your grave that makes you throw the emergency brake and jerk the wheel, popping open the door. Your mother cares more about the dead than the living, and you’ve been the opposite of what she wanted so far, no reason to change now. Your knees and palms hit the sandy ground, momentum pulling you backwards. Rocks scrape your hands sending shocks of pain up your arms and you dig your nails into the dirt harder in response. This is who you are. You are your mother’s son, but you are not your mother. You are done running and hiding.

___

You’re eleven and done.

The next few months are hell, but at least you don’t have to pretend that you’re not broken anymore. Now everyone knows that you are just as crazy as your bereaved mother. (“She was just never the same after her husband died. Did you hear that she spends more time off-planet than she does with her own children? Can you imagine?”) Just as cowardly as your older brother. (“Both of those boys have tried to run away now, I hear. What is in the water over at that farmhouse? This is what happens when you give boys too much freedom.”) Just as unhinged as your stepfather. (“Oh no, sweetie, don’t talk to him. That boy drove a car off of a cliff last summer—he could be dangerous!”) School is no longer your refuge; the students and teachers alike flinch back from you like you’re a rabid dog. You are miserable alone, but you’re used to it now. You turn in all of your work the same day it’s assigned and get perfect grades in a backhanded act of vengeance against the snide whispers that you’ll never be anything more than trash. You get good at slipping in and out of places unnoticed, stepping from shadow to shadow as easily as breathing. You’re a phantom at home, rarely seen or heard, which is all that shields you from Frank’s ever-growing ire. You take to hiding out in the attic a lot. Frank is too large—or drunk—to make it up the creaky ladder, so you feel safe there. You are up there for the third time when you decide to go through the mountains of crumbling, dusty boxes stored up there from when this was still your mother and father’s house, rather than Frank’s palace. You make it through six boxes of assorted holiday decorations and years-old forgotten nick-knacks before you stumble upon it. Your parents’ wedding album. Flipping page after page you see picture after picture of their smiling faces, expressions you’ve never seen, laughter you’ve never heard. Forcing your hands to unclench, you set it aside and pick up the next book. It’s Sam’s baby album—painstakingly done in shades of blue and green, pictures pasted along with dates and comments, a lock of his hair tied with a bow, one of his socks lovingly nestled in the pages. Something in you snaps, the pain is immediate, sharp and cold like an icicle in your gut. You shove the book away from you, curling around yourself, biting your lip bloody to keep from screaming at how unfair it is. You will never get to see your parents happy and whole, will never know that love. You will never get to look at a baby album, laughing at how many silly pictures of you there are. Your childhood was documented in 3-minute vidcalls to space stations and the chores that got added to your list as you got older. You were born in a vacuum, and in a vacuum you have remained—cold and choking, trying to breathe in the void.

You’re eleven and stuck.

In the bitterest cold of February, you find boxes of your father’s things, shoved in the farthest corner of the attic, forgotten. You pour over pictures of him, trying to memorize the crooked line of his smile and the wrinkles around his eyes. You look into the broken mirror you unearthed a week ago and see yourself reflected back in 18 pieces, each one a pale, shattered imitation of the man so bright he still shines like a star a decade after his death. You wonder if he would have liked you. You wonder if he would have taught you how to tie your shoelaces and patted you on the head and looked at you and smiled. You try to imagine it. You try to imagine your life with him in it. You imagine him with you when you go to school, teachers sneering, students scorning. You imagine him giving you that crinkle-eyed smile and telling you “Keep your chin up, son.” You imagine him with you when you go home, sneaking in a window to avoid alerting Frank to your presence. You imagine him with you when you creep out your window for school the next morning, slipping and falling down the last 6 feet of drainpipe. You imagine his hand on your shoulder, his voice warm as he tells you “You’ll be fine, son. You’re strong, you can do it. I believe in you.” You imagine him with you in the attic, narrating his stories as you read them in letters to your mother, to his family, to his friends. You find your namesake, Tiberius Kirk, in a box in the attic. You find years worth of Starfleet manuals and books, textbooks for the classes your father took at the Academy, blueprints for warp cores and constitution-class starships. You read all of it, devouring the words, soaking it in like salvation, a link to the only person in your life who hadn’t had a choice in throwing you away. You understand it, most of it, and what you don’t you research until you do. You’re a genius, the teachers at school say; of course you would be, with those parents. You decide to go to space. So what if your planet doesn’t want you—there are plenty of other planets.

You’re eleven and gone.

It takes you until the last days of spring to go through all of your father’s boxes. In the last box, your fingers brush cold metal at the bottom. Drawing it out, you gasp a little, fingers tangling in the heavy chain. In your hand you have your father’s dog tag. The Kelvin was the first ship to have completely digitized crew recognition systems, you know, so logically you should have been expecting to find this, but even so it shocks you, your eyes tracing the metal. It’s vaguely rectangular, made of thick, silver alloy; the Starfleet emblem—a circle filled with stars, surrounded by laurels—etched into the front, centered. The Starfleet motto, Ad Astra Per Aspera, rings the seal in bold, elegant print. Flipping it over, your breath catches again. The bottom half is the blue-tinted computer chip that allows the tag to be inserted into machinery to verify its owner’s identity. On the top half, written horizontally along the long side of the tag is KIRK in bold print, with his lieutenant commander’s stripes below it. Running your fingertips over the worn metal, you squeeze your eyes shut so that you don’t cry. Minutes or hours later, you compose yourself, slipping the chain over your head, the pendant settling low on your sternum. You crawl down the rickety ladder, unable to stay in the suffocating dark of the attic any longer. The next day, Frank tells you that you’re moving in with family on Tarsus IV.

___

You’re thirteen and have never been so happy.

You just turned 13 a few days ago and you had a party. This is the second birthday you’ve had on Tarsus, and the second party you’ve had. You’re living with your uncle—your father’s brother—and his wife and children. They own a farm and everyone, Uncle Rick and Aunt Emmy and Chuck and Marcie and now you, work on it. You can see echoes of your father in Uncle Rick. You wonder if he sees your father in you. This is the first example of a real family that you’ve seen up close, and you love it. You were skittish as a kicked dog for the first six months, but they never gave up on you. They took you in as family and you love them fiercely. You love helping out with cooking and cleaning and farming and watching your little cousins. You crave the responsibility they give you, drink in the trust they have in you and do your best not to let them down. You notice the strain around their eyes in April, and you think the workload is stressing them out. You try to do more so that they can relax. You take your cousins more, learning the woods beyond the farm, leaning the landscape of Tarsus just outside of the colony. Days pass and the adults’ smiles become more and more wan. Then, a summons from Governor Kodos comes in early May.

You’re thirteen and have a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach.

The guards have gathered everyone from your section of the colony in one huge chamber. Then they went down each row of people, moving some to a smaller room next door. Uncle Rick was first in your row, with Chuck in between him and Aunt Emmy. You’re on the end, holding Marcie because she had a cold and the medicine knocked her out. The guard gestures Uncle Rick and Chuck toward the smaller room, leaving Aunt Emmy gripping your shoulders like she would fly apart if she didn’t hold on. The doors close behind them, and Governor Kodos steps out onto a small stage. “The revolution is successful. But survival depends on drastic measures.” Your heart gives an ominous thump in your too-tight chest. You look at Aunt Emmy; she’s pale and shaking. “Your continued existence represents a threat to the well-being of society. Your lives mean slow death to the more valued members of the colony.” Aunt Emmy kneels, whispers to you “I love you, I love you, I love you, I’m so sorry. You have to run. Take Marcie and run, no matter what happens, and don’t look back.” You’re numb, like rock, struck dumb with terror and dread. She kisses you once, twice, bends and presses her forehead to Marcie’s. “Therefore, I have no alternative but to sentence you to death. Your execution is so ordered, signed Kodos, Governor of Tarsus IV.” Screams erupt from every corner of the room, people start running everywhere, throwing themselves at walls and doors, only to be mowed down by the guards. Aunt Emmy grabs your hand and runs around the perimeter of the room, getting close to the door. She then screams and falls down, shoving you under her. Your heart lurches, but you can feel her heartbeat still, thrumming like a rabbit’s. The three of you inch closer to the door, stilling every time a guard comes near. After an eternity, the doors creak open to admit a cleanup crew. Aunt Emmy springs up, pulling you after her, sprinting through the doors. “Run!” she gasps, before a deafening boom shakes your world. You run, zigzagging towards the tree line, not letting yourself do anything more than that. You run, ignoring the spray of wet heat on your back. You run, and run, and run.

You’re thirteen and have watched your world crumble to ashes. 

As you run, you pick up other kids. Marcie’s awake now, sobbing quietly, not understanding but knowing that everything is wrong. First is Thomas, then Kevin, then Synis, Noelle, Alex, Rodger, and Khris. You all live in a cave deep in the woods. At first you forage from the abandoned houses. When that runs out, you eat what you can from the land, berries and leaves. You kill when you have to, both animals and guards, but you don’t let the other children see it. You’re the oldest; it’s your responsibility. You have plenty of water from fresh lakes and streams, so you weaken from starvation, but slowly. You lose track of time. You estimate it’s been 3 months since the slaughter, and you don’t know how much longer you can hold out. You give what food you can find to the youngest, risk going into more populated areas to scavenge. You get roughed up when the guards catch you, but it’s worth it when you get free and the children are able to survive another month on what you retrieved. It’s been four and a half months by your count when you hear dozens of unfamiliar voices yelling over the whirring of machinery. You take the children and sneak down to the edge of the trees, watching the explosion of red and blue and gold shirts looking around in horror at the ruins of the colony. You step through the trees alone, and when you don’t get shot, motion for your children to step through after you. You croak, “These guys need help.”

Starfleet comes up to you and says “It’s okay, kid, everything’s going to be okay." 

And you laugh, a hacking, ugly, bitter thing, because you’re thirteen, and you know that nothing will ever be okay again.


End file.
